


fetter

by kingsoftheimpossible



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Blessings, Celibacy, Religious Themes but not like Actually Religious, Scheming., ja feel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2019-08-27 21:03:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/pseuds/kingsoftheimpossible
Summary: Leading up to the draft, there were whispers. These became hisses, which grew into roars, which turned into a cacophony, which then gave way finally to cold, hard, legally documented fact: one of the Russians was blessed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to [jolach](https://archiveofourown.net/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach) and [angularmomentum](https://archiveofourown.net/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum)!!!! in the groupchat, this was called "blurse fic" lol
> 
> title from the third verse of "come thou fount", an old gospel hymn [can also strongly rec the sufjan stevens version bc its that time of year]
> 
> "Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.  
> Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee."

Leading up to the draft, there were whispers. These became hisses, which grew into roars, which turned into a cacophony, which then gave way finally to cold, hard, legally documented fact: one of the Russians was blessed.

Not unusual in itself; some two-thirds of professional hockey players carried a blessing, and even in Sweden they were run-of-the-mill, though regulated by the state. The usual: _This one will never break a bone. This one will not go hungry. This one will sleep well._

Hell, even Nicklas was blessed: _this one will be whole._ (Kristoffer had gotten _find love_ , which Nicklas privately felt was completely unfair, as pretty much everyone was whole to start with, so his own blessing was more of a statement of fact while Kristoffer’s was a promise.)

None of that simplicity for the Russian Virgin, as the media had taken to calling him as soon as the details of his blessing were obtained from the hospital of his birth.

 _Greatness,_ the rolling ribbon along the bottom of the sports broadcasts read, _so long as he remains untouched._

This had been followed by half-hour debate segments where sports analysts argued themselves blue-in-the-face over whether _untouched_ should actually be something closer to _pure_ or perhaps _chaste_ , _intact, unsullied, unwed_ (in the Biblical sense). The list of possibilities went on for as long as anyone cared to discuss it, but it hardly mattered seeing as they all came down to the same thing.

Nicklas had thought, _Who cares? Who cares what some scrawny Russian does or doesn’t do with his dick?_ while quietly seething at _greatness_. Talk about a promise. Talk about a blessing. Talk about a pain in Nicklas’ ass in the future, when he gets to the NHL and has to play against some guy with a blessing like _that._

And then two years had passed, and Nicklas had arrived at the draft, and his name had been called by a lanky scarecrow of a Russian with a terrible haircut and a jigsaw puzzle face, and Nicklas still didn’t care, precisely, where Alexander Ovechkin’s dick went.

But he did feel a hell of a lot softer about Ovechkin’s blessing, knowing it would be on his side.

* * *

Sasha spends a lot of time thinking about greatness. When people in bars run their hands up his arms, when he ends up on the receiving end of an inviting head tilt, when Nicklas Backstrom walks around the locker room with his wet post-shower hair dripping cold down the neck of his wet post-shower shirt because he won’t just wear a towel like everyone else.

Greatness.

He has a checklist of what it means to him- Olympics, President’s Trophy, Conference Champion, Stanley Cup, on and on- and he runs down the list while he drags his fingers along the heavy gold links of his chain necklace the way he’s seen other people touch rosaries.

It helps that the locker room is usually chilly.

Sanya-who-was-Sasha-before-him has a way of catching him at his weakest. Sasha’s wondered more than once if that particular talent’s not something to do with Sanya’s own blessing, but he’s never managed to wheedle the actual content of it out of him to be sure.

“That one?” Sanya murmurs, clearly amused. His eyes are glinting and sly, lit up bright in his smooth face as he glances between Sasha and the fully-clothed odd-bodied rookie now mulishly chewing a protein bar in his stall, and Sasha carefully thinks about greatness again. A chain link- Rocket Richard trophy; another chain link- Hall of Fame.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sasha dodges, avoiding looking at both Nicklas and Sanya, because they each have their own particular pitfalls that Sasha is still too twenty-years-old to think around sometimes.

Sanya pitches towards him on the bench, acres of bare, freckled skin and lean muscle Sasha treats like he treats every other kind of pornography: he doesn’t think about it, and he doesn’t look, and when it’s put in front of him like a test, he passes with flying colors.

Some days it is easy; some days things he’s seen from the corner of his eye play like an old ticker tape film reel while he lies awake, sweating in the dark.

Sanya’s rough, blunt fingers catch on his neck, slide down the goosefleshed skin to hook in his necklace and lightly pull. The entire movement takes maybe a fraction of a second, but the warm pads of Sanya’s fingers feel like an eternity. Sasha could probably draw his fingerprints from memory, just from where they rest against his collarbone now.

“If you keep praying so much around me, I’m going to think you’re some sort of religious nut.” Sanya’s mouth stretches in a wide smirk that pulls the strange, putty skin of his face taut. Sometimes Sasha wants to touch him just to see if he feels half so odd and surreal as he looks, but he’s never been one for doing things in part. Anyway-

“I’m not praying,” Sasha scoffs, shoving Sanya away and willing his own hands numb so he won’t feel and remember the smooth warmth of his bare shoulder. It never works, but he likes to try. “Maybe you pray for less penalties, huh?”

Sanya scowls and hisses something that sounds vaguely like _pray_ and _foot_ and _ass_ as he turns to his locker and starts pulling clothes on, swinging his sharp elbows with reckless abandon. Sasha chances another peek over towards Nicklas and is pleasantly surprised to find Nicklas looking right back at him. Sasha grins without thinking about it, and it feels like the earth tilts a bit sideways when Nicklas’ cheeks pink up and he returns the grin with a sly little smile.

Sasha blinks, and thinks, concisely, _Uh-oh._

* * *

It doesn't take long before Nicklas stops seeing Alex as "The Russian Virgin" and starts thinking of him as just... _Alex._ He's so himself, blessing be damned, that it's hard to imagine even God keeping him from doing exactly what he'd like to do whenever he'd like to do it. They go out to shitty bars after losses and Alex drinks like the base of a fountain, dragging the entire lot of them along in a surge of _we'll get them next time._ They go out to slightly better bars after wins and Alex spews joy across whichever damn city he's landed in, _we'll get them again._

It's heady, falling into his orbit. It's hard not to watch him dodging artfully through crowds, avoiding touches where he can and kindly shrugging them aside when there's no other out. Twenty-odd years of experience, Nicklas thinks with more than a little wonder.

They're in Chicago, drinking, drinking, drinking, and Nicklas is watching with fond, sloshed amusement as Alex disentangles himself from a well-meaning, pleasantly handsy American woman, a rejection so practiced and lighthearted that she almost looks flattered when he manages to duck away, crooked grin on his crooked mouth.

Nicklas doesn't think of him as the Russian Virgin anymore, but he still has a habit of watching Alex's face carefully when they're out like this, just to see if he can spot... disappointment, longing. Something. He hasn't seen any of it yet, but he keeps searching in spite of himself. Alex looks up and meets his eye, finds him like a spotlight the way he always seems to do. His grin stretches impossibly wider and Nicklas smiles back, helpless.

He sings “ _Nickyyy_ ,” when he gets close enough to be heard over the thumping music, and Nicklas scrunches his face at the dissonance.

“ _Alex,_ ” he tries, his best attempt at admonishment. It’s mostly just warmth, but the room is warm and Nicklas is warm and Alex looks temptingly, dangerously warm where his neck has flushed red, glistening with sweat in the intermittently flashing bar lights.

Nicklas does, occasionally, still think of him as the Russian Virgin. Just usually not when anyone else is around, if he can help it.

He tears his attention away from the open collar of Alex’s shirt and realizes Alex is talking merrily, waving his hands and holding the steady, unwavering eye contact that Nicklas has always suspected is a defensive strategy of sorts. If there were things Nicklas couldn’t have, he’d like to think he’d be smart enough not to look at them, too. The irony of the present moment isn’t lost on him, but he’d still like to think.

Alex pushes another beer into Nicklas’ hands, his half-empty glass already spirited away in his distraction. “We good, yeah?” Alex asks, tongue poking out, mischievous, between the wide gap in his smile.

It’s a simplification, because they aren’t always good- not the whole team, and not the two of them together, and not even just Alex. But Nicklas nods, feeling pleasantly disgusting from a day of hockey and a night of bar-hopping. “Yeah,” he agrees, watching himself watch the precious crinkles around Alex’s eyes with an astonished detachment, like watching someone else turn into oncoming traffic. “We good.”

* * *

 

If Sasha’s chain was always enough to save him, he supposes it might feel like cheating.

Usually, the bars are fun, and the drinking dulls the sea of touch until he can almost consider himself a regular man. Errant brushes of fingers here and there slide off him, so much water off a duck. He pictures his clothing like armor, the sparse inches between him and the next person as an uncrossable moat.

Then he’ll get back to the hotel, and Sanya will be in the shower, and then out of the shower, and it’s always more difficult to think around when it’s a soft homelike hotel suite and not the cold comfortless metal of a locker room.

Or he’ll catch Nicklas at the wrong moment, those small faint brows drawn together in deep concentration as he stares at Sasha’s shoulders or hands or, turning too suddenly, the ghost of the dip of his back. A minefield, sometimes, of things Sasha doesn’t even know how to think about.

It’d be easier if they were doing it on purpose and he could be angry, the way he can in bars when people who recognize him come up and proposition him with a cruel, interested glint in their eyes. How much simpler that is than just-

Wanting something.

And how insane, how ungrateful, to want anything besides what he’s already been promised.

Sasha wraps a fist tight in his chain, eyes closed as Sanya bumps about their hotel room, amiable as a fat honey bee on a warm day. He thumbs a chain link and turns his mind away from imagining the tan expanse of Sanya’s back and onto the way he sounds charmingly drunk, tripping over his suitcase and lazily bumping into the bedside table, soft good-natured swearing in the dark behind Sasha’s eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. fixed upon it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at some point i had an entire coherent plan for what this fic was about and what was going to happen but that's entirely gone. i was also going to edit this more but i'm feeling maudlin and nervous about the general state of the world. merry august.

Sasha runs himself ragged that first year, and the second, and so on, ad infinitum.

Sanya’s American apartment came with these huge three-wick candles, so wide the flames never melt the edges. Watching Sasha feels like that sometimes, seeing his insides all turn liquidsoft and warm while the outside stays room temperature. If you tipped him over, he’d pour himself hollow.

 _Better to be unblessed_ , Sanya thinks wearily, near-drowned by all that honey-thick childish want rolling off Sasha in waves. The locker room is the worst, except maybe the bar, except maybe sharing a cab, except maybe sharing a hotel room, except, except, except. 

Sometimes Sanya thinks about touching him just to speed up the wick burning down. Some days that seems kinder. 

* * *

 

Nicke has never been one for casual touches. He and Kris pinched and punched across the backseat of the car as much as any set of siblings, but the way some of the guys in the locker room do it-

Knuckles across the chin in passing, the warm cup of someone’s palm on the crown of your head. Thigh against thigh, knee bumping knee, toes shoved up against your hip.

For Nicklas, it’s a lot. For Alex, it must be the longest, gentlest violence in the entire world. 

* * *

 

Sasha’s never been a fighter, exactly. Big hits, big moves, meaningful contributions. Forward motion. Fighting stops the clock, stills the outside world until it’s just you, someone else’s hands, someone else’s body, blood roaring-

Sasha’s never let himself be a fighter, and it takes a few years to realize that braving his way through crowded, reaching bars is just another kind of fighting. Just because he can grit his teeth through something doesn’t mean he has to, or should. 

He likes to think it’s a sign of maturity when he starts staying in, even if it mostly feels like defeat. 

* * *

 

“You’re fucking miserable sometimes,” says Sanya. He’s on his own hotel bed, the one near the open window. His body’s stretched long and lean, tanned and pale in turn across the starched sheets, and Sasha only lets himself look at the cigarette dangling lazily from Sanya’s calloused fingers. 

“I’m always good,” Sasha shoots back, tearing his eyes away from the cigarette as it drifts towards Sanya’s mouth again.

“I used to think, maybe you don’t try so hard and it’ll get easier,” Sanya continues. He does that sometimes, just keeps going like Sasha’s never said a word. Sasha grits his teeth and bumps up the volume on Jeopardy. “Now you don’t try at all, and it’s like sharing a room with a corpse. Stink and all.”

Sasha breathes through his nose, though the labored rattling of his deviated septum makes it louder than breathing through his mouth. He grumbles, “Cleaner than you,” and cranks Jeopardy so high that someone bangs on the far wall in protest.

If Sasha’s fucked up nose makes his breathing loud, Sanya must have deviated eyelids because Sasha could hear that fucking eye roll from space. “Oh, the pure, unsullied Virgin is disgusted by my earthly squallor. Call a priest.”

Sometimes Sasha wants to snap _what do you want from me!_ But he already knows, in that taiga expanse at the base of his brain that he’s frozen out since cognizance arrived unbidden. 

Sasha turns the tv down to a human volume, sets the remote on the bedside table, and fingers a link of his gold chain. Stanley Cup. Another link. Hall of Fame. 

Sanya curses softly and stubs his cigarette out on the windowsill.

* * *

 

Sasha learned early on how little bodies care about blessings. As far as formative experiences went, that one characterized itself firmly as traumatic, if survivable. The clearest moments: his mother’s face, stonily impassive as she stripped the sheets from his bed with sharp, precise movements; the conversation between his parents carried out solely in eye contact, ending with a stiff shrug and nervous tic of a head turn; the shame, a crushing wave; the not-knowing, a rocky promontory the wave pounded against. 

Waiting to see if he had broken something he’d only begun to understand the breadth of at that age. That had been terrible. Every shift for two weeks after, counting his ice time in pounding heartbeats, _does the stick feel strange in my hands now or am I just imagining..._ , his mother’s thin-pursed mouth in the stands, keeping track for and of him. 

He’d held his necklace so tightly during those weeks it was a wonder it hadn’t broken clean off. Maybe that had been the start of that habit. He’d never noticed it before.

And then after the waiting- a game where he’d pulled a win for all of them out of the pit of his own belly, left nothing in himself, walked to the locker room on shaking legs, euphoric, because he’d caught sight of his mother’s tiny smile after his last goal, more a loosening at the corners of her lips than a true rising- 

He’d broken nothing. He was safe, for now. What had been promised him, and her, was still his. 

The relief was a physical thing, something that came back to him in dreams of flying weightless over the ice, over the sea, fields, cities, the earth. That exact drop in his stomach- _safe._ Blessed. 

Ah, but dreams. The other kind, after, that had plagued him since and would continue to do so, for all Sasha knew, for the rest of his life. The heart-pounding, stomach-clenching terror of it-

He didn’t dream of hands or mouths or any soft or solid part of a body. It was just color, darkness, rolling, roiling feeling that sucked him down and out of himself, and he would wake, even now, twenty-odd years old, frightened as a boy again, sheets wet and jaw clenched for those awful, frozen moments before he could remind himself-

The weight of his chain around his throat- blessed. That humid hotel air conditioner smell- blessed. The distinctly American night-time noise through the window. Sanya breathing softly in the far bed. 

He breathes deep through his nose. Alexander Ovechkin, great and untouched, safe and blessed. Sore in his bones and body, disgusting in his hotel sheets and dick region. Someday it will probably be almost funny, to be this old and this wound up. 

* * *

 

If blessings came with a refund policy, Nicklas would be hammering down the goddamned door, receipt in hand. _Wholeness,_ and some days it feels like his brain is going to beat out of his skull and all the team doctor can tell him is to sit with the lights off. _Wholeness_ , and he stubs his toe on the end of his bed one night and the entire nail pops off. _Wholeness,_ and there he is on the bench, spitting out his mouth-guard and a tooth all at once.

It’s not even the goddamn pain of it all so much as the _what the fuck does it mean then._

He’s heard Sanya Semin grumble _better to be unblessed_ more times than he can count at this point, but Nicklas has finally stopped rolling his eyes and started agreeing with a guttural little _mmph_ in the back of his throat. What's the damn point of it all?

“Gonna be handsome like me.”

Nicklas looks up from his private snit to find Alex beaming at him, close range. He’s always more touchy in pads and gear, in front of an audience, during games, but it still lights Nicklas up a little.

It hurts when he smiles back, but Alex’s eyes crinkle as he moves aside to let the trainer dab at the blood trickling down Nicklas’ chin. 

* * *

 

Nicke’s Russian is no good but he doesn’t need it to pick up the general foul mood festering. They’re losing so much even Greenie’s hard to talk to. 

It’s all made worse by the dynamic duo’s little spat. No one knows what happened, because trying to understand anything about Alex and Semin from the outside is like trying to read a book with the cover firmly closed, and the cover also laughs at you across the locker room when it knows you’re looking. Alex and Semin get in these fights. They range from loud and stupid to silent and legitimately worrying, and Nicklas prefers not to be around either of them when they’re angry with each other. Alex gets moody and quiet. Semin gets vicious and snippy. They’re terrible; school sweethearts at each other’s throats one moment and engaged the next. 

Nicke’s Russian is no good, but he doesn’t need it to understand the gruff “Your problem,” Semin graces him with before shoving a room key in Nicke’s hand. Nicke has questions, like _why_ and _where are you planning to sleep then_ , but Semin flashes another key that has the distinct aura of having been in Nicke’s back pocket recently. Maybe Semin being able to pickpocket him with his massive hands is the universe telling Nicklas to buy pants that actually fit. 

Nicke hasn’t been in the NHL long, but he’s got a working theory that Buffalo is no good for anyone’s well-being. Nicklas can rarely abide a temper tantrum, his own included, and Alex is in rare form when Nicke lets himself into their now-shared room. 

It’s a credit to how bad this particular Alexanders-Only Brawl must be that Alex doesn’t even look up when the door opens and closes. Nicke read some Field & Stream article about the way ducklings can imprint on anything, and he’d pictured the way Alex shadowed Semin, somehow even when he was the one leading the way.

Alex bites out some expletive-riddled Russian over his shoulder, doesn’t bother glancing up from where he’s kneeling over his suitcase and throwing shit around like a child. 

Nicklas leans back against the door and crosses his arms for good measure. Says “I don’t know what you’re saying” in unimpressed Swedish, just to complete the absurdity of the moment. 

The full-body jerk that goes through Alex and sets him off-balance is, in Nicklas’ opinion, a little dramatic, and it leaves him blinking up at Nicklas from his new place of honor, on his ass in his own luggage. He stammers through asking what Nicke’s doing here, apparently warring between relieved and irritated to find someone other than Semin. 

“You chased him off with your bad attitude,” Nicke explains, finally leaving his place by the door and dropping his own bag beside the far bed. 

Alex sputters. “ _My_ bad attitude? Nicky!” He’s holding a hand to his heart like he’s been mortally wounded, and Nicklas has to fight a smile. Judging from the delighted glint in Alex’s eyes, that’s what he’s going for, and Nicklas isn’t sure he deserves it yet. 

“Sema is always easy to talk to,” Nicke says, soldiering through with a straight face, “so you must be the problem.”

The faux-hurt on Alex’s face melts into a wide grin, and Nicke thinks Semin might be the only person in the world with the strength to not go too easy on him. 

Hours later, they’ve gone through their bedtime routines and Alex has turned the lights off and put on some trashy American game show at the lowest volume. Nicklas is nearly out when Alex clears his throat, which is more reticence to speak than he’s heard from Alex since he called his name at the draft. 

“You asleep?” he says, quiet enough that if Nicke were, it wouldn’t wake him. 

He debates answering, because he is, actually, tired. He still doesn’t care for planes, and he still doesn’t care for Buffalo, and he’s never cared for any amount of losing that could be qualified as a “streak.” The weight of not caring for a lot of things tends to drag on you. 

But he hums his assent, not bothering to turn towards Alex’s voice in the dark. 

But either he waited too long to answer and Alex changed his mind or he fell asleep, because nothing floats back to him, and eventually Nicklas shuts his eyes and tries to get some rest. 

* * *

 

He’s always been a light sleeper. When he’d shared a room with Kris on family vacations, he had to lay awake all night because Kris snored like a farm animal. In the morning their mother would chastise Nicke for being sullen and lazy, and he’d try not to yawn too obviously. 

The sounds are soft, and when he blinks awake he can’t place them at first. 

The clock on the nightstand and the strange, silent infomercials on the television say its an ungodly hour. _Rustling_ , Nicklas thinks hazily, squinting through the unreal blue half-light towards Alex’s bed. He thinks, at first, that Alex is awake, and even goes so far as to open his mouth to ask him to shut the television off, but-

He can just make out the tense set of Alex’s shoulders, face half-pressed into the pillow. His loud, labored breathing.

Nicklas watches helplessly, the part of his brain that’s solved the riddle miles ahead of the lagging infrastructure that could close his eyes, drag the blanket up over his head. 

The scene pieces itself together in fits and starts. Alex’s body shifting aimlessly beneath the sheets, the muffled, desperate edge to the soft sounds spilling from his mouth, lips caught open on the pillow in an aborted bite. Every time Alex shoves his hips against the mattress, it feels like a drumbeat in Nicklas’ skull. When his eyebrows pull together, pained, Nicke’s brow furrows in something like sympathy, mouth dropping open in a mirror image.

It looks like it hurts, when he finally comes. 

Alex exhales, a noisy gale force wind, body sinking lax and still against the bed. Nicklas hadn’t realized how tightly Alex’s body was usually strung until now, watching the wires get cut in real time. Alex’s tongue moves lazily against his soft palate, loud in the otherwise silent room, and Nicklas thinks his mouth must be dry from breathing that hard for so many long minutes.

Nicklas' skin feels hot, and his heart hammers, and he stays exquisitely, achingly still. 

It takes him forever to fall asleep, and when he finally does his dreams are at best inadvisable. 

In the morning, Alex is awake before Nicklas, sitting on the floor in his game day suit and folding his clothes methodically before placing them back in his suitcase. Nicklas can’t think of anything to say, and Alex doesn’t seem inclined to talk. His bed is carefully made, military-corners and all. Nicklas looks at anything else as he gets dressed. 

At breakfast, Nicklas meets Semin’s eyes across the table without really meaning to, and he’s struck still by the impassive set of his face. It feels, suddenly, as if a spider had laid a trap, not for him, but for something else using him as bait. Nicklas can feel his own face flushing, the skin on his neck prickling up, and Semin just watches him, calm on the surface, his mouth a straight, thin line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IF you have any questions or insight into what it is i am trying to do here, i'd love to hear it. beats the hell out of me.


End file.
